Ponzi Scheme

Joel D. Nelson, the jaunty Hollywood Hills promoter accused of bilking investors out of about $20 million, was sentenced in Los Angeles this morning to 15 years in a federal penitentiary. Nelson, 50, who had remained a fugitive for 2 1/2 years before his arrest last June in San Antonio, Tex., pleaded guilty four months ago to five of the 35 mail-fraud counts filed against him by a federal grand jury in December, 1982. U.S. District Judge Consuelo B.

Federal law-enforcement authorities are conducting what they call "a significant" tax and fraud investigation said to focus on a Ponzi scheme that may have bilked San Fernando Valley investors. The investigation is being conducted by the Internal Revenue Service and the Los Angeles Strike Force of the U. S. Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, according to Special Attorney Edwin J. Gale, who heads the strike force.

About 400 "naive" investors, most of them recruited by Clifford E. Lampman at Christian Bible study groups that he organized, turned over a total of about $10 million to his fraudulent "international" business based in Covina, federal securities regulators told a court here Friday. Only $200 of the investors' money has been found in seized bank accounts, they said. U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima appointed a temporary receiver to try and find more assets.

The contempt and disgust for American senior citizens that Hiipakka so clearly stated in his letter is a distortion of facts and highly demeaning. Most eligible retirees paid Social Security taxes for 40 quarters (10 years) at a time when wages were under $1 an hour. These taxes were a great dent in the take-home salary and not "negligible," as defined by Hiipakka. Social Security taxes withheld as well as the benefits derived are based on the highest income earned during the 40-quarter period.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed civil charges against two Southern California men, alleging that they ran a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that targeted Latinos, the commission announced Monday. Acting at the request of the commodities agency, U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson last week froze the assets of Ruben Gonzalez of West Covina and Jose C. Naranjo of La Mirada and their company, New Golden Investment Group. The defendants and the company could not be reached for comment.

Federal regulators have frozen the assets of a Delaware company accused of swindling nearly 8,000 investors in a $485-million Ponzi scheme that falsely promised hefty returns on investments in the oil and gas business, officials said. Three businessmen in Dallas, where Provident Royalties has its main office, ran the nationwide operation involving fraudulent securities offerings between June 2006 and January 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged.

A sentencing hearing is continuing this week for a San Juan Capistrano man convicted on 693 felony counts for defrauding more than 125 senior citizens out of their life savings in a Ponzi scheme. The proceeding began Friday for Jeffrey Gordon Butler, who was convicted in June of stealing more than $11 million from elderly investors through the illegal sale of unqualified promissory notes or stocks and filing false tax returns on his ill-gained profits, said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney's office.

A former high school football coach who operated a Ponzi scheme that bilked nearly $12 million from more than 200 investors pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of mail fraud and two counts of submitting false tax returns to banks. Alan Keranen, 42, formerly of Woodland Hills, admitted to U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. that he siphoned off money from the Woodland Hills-based California Anchor Group for his personal use, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Anita Dymant.